


White Noise

by BottledUpWishes



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-09-01 09:53:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8619817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BottledUpWishes/pseuds/BottledUpWishes
Summary: In a forest near the Yangtze River, a woman at the end of her rope meets the Merciful Goddess.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I think about Kouran more than I should.

Kouran might have been pretty, once, with a slender figure graced by long golden hair and round, bright violet eyes.  But now that all watered down into colours that just didn’t exist.  Murky, flat colours mucked up by dirt and blood.  Dirt got into and beneath her skin.  Blood covered everything from the waist below.

  


Even though late autumn robbed trees of their green leaves, the bold golds and reds scattered across the canopy blocked the sky still.  It didn’t matter how deep into the forest she went, the scenery looked all the same, and late autumn left the air crisp and lonely.

 

Yet she still felt watched.  As if the trees and underbrush, their eyes hidden, watched her, crawling on her like insects.  She’d left her father for a man who swept her off her feet and disappeared from her life in the blink of an eye, and now listened to leaves falling and the nonstop wailing of a new member in this flat world.

 

The most she managed was to place a raggedy old cloth roughly where the newborn came to be, staining it with deep crimson.  She did not hold the baby.  She couldn’t.  What energy she had left refused to do so.  When she caught a glimpse of him, her heart sank.

 

_That’s it?_

 

That single thought crumbled everything around her.  As pitiful as she seemed and felt, she knew she maintained some semblance of pride, but within that was a thorn of something unknown to her.  It scared her.   _Terrified_ her.  Made her heart ache and voice crack.  What should have made her world a bright place instead eclipsed the entire sky.  What made it worse was the irrevocable fact that it wasn’t the baby’s fault at her, but her own.  Her thoughts, her feelings.

 

She wanted to scream, but her voice failed to gather the strength.  The baby’s cries now white noise to her, she slowly rolled her head over to the side.  Food, water, and even a hunting knife she brought with the slim hope she’d be able to use it, all discarded when she couldn’t take oncoming pain any longer, rendered useless to her and more a snack for animals.

 

A headache drilled into her, exacerbated by exhaustion and the nonstop crying.  

 

 _Stop_.

 

She pressed her hands to her face, shrinking into herself.

 

_“Stop it.”_

 

Instead of obliging, the baby’s cries and wails turned to blubbering and screaming.  A particular surge of it rang in Kouran’s ears, and she screamed right along with it.

 

“I said _stop it!_ ”

“Infused by her anger, Kouran reached for the hunting knife.  This baby.  This baby was the one thing still around to remind of how twisted her world became.  

  


The knife struck the ground above the baby’s head, but did not hurt him.  Glaring down at his red face, white-hot emotion overwhelmed Kouran.  She was crying, the tears just as plentiful as her own son’s, her face just as red and pathetic to look at.

 

“If you’re so angry at the world, why not leave him alive?”

 

The elegant voice conflicted with Kouran’s sobbing.  She looked up, locking eyes with a tall, young-looking woman dressed in loose, revealing clothing.  She didn’t fit with the forest’s environment whatsoever, what with her long black hair and noticeable chakra upon her forehead.  Her eyes matched Kouran’s, but still bright with life matched with a smile.

 

The woman crossed her arms, approaching Kouran and the baby on bare feet.  Slowly, her focus trailed to the baby, and she gave a long sigh.  “Such a noisy little thing he is.”  She turned to the river.  “You can’t even hear the riverflow.”

 

Noticing how dry her mouth was, Kouran didn’t speak.  She just stared at the woman, her eyes puffy and stinging.  Who the woman was, she didn’t know. The chakra implied she meant something to others, but she hadn’t the motivation to care.  Even her smile, ill-timed as it was, couldn’t elicit any feelings of resentment or anger.  She didn’t _think_ she felt apathetic, just exhausted.

 

She didn’t stop the woman from picking the hunting knife up.  “This is one way to keep a baby from crying, but it isn’t much use if you don’t aim correctly, don’t you think?”

 

Kouran bit her lip, looking away.

 

“Well…”  The woman tossed the knife into the river.  Kouran jerked for it, a sliver of panic electrified her, but the second she didn’t understand why, she froze, and once more remained motionless.  “It sure would be a shame if you went through with it.  He seems like he’d be a carbon copy of you, and you have the most wonderful pair of eyes to pass onto him.”

 

Kouran’s voice worked without her permission.  “I’m… not raising him…”  She couldn’t in her condition.  Not ever.  Not with winter approaching.  She just didn’t have it in her.  She was, ultimately, a young girl.  She used to be bright-eyed, strong, a fierce person undeterred by obstacles.

 

But a single baby drained her of that.

 

“Maybe you’re drained because you unintentionally gave all that up to him,” the woman suggested.  She laughed and shrugged off her own suggestion.  “There’s not much that matches the desperate need to live of a baby.”

 

Kouran didn’t argue.

 

“If you feel so betrayed by the world, and at such a loss because of him, make him someone else’s problem.  With as much as he cries, he’s bound to give trouble for others at some point.  You’re right to think you won’t last long, and I’m no saviour, merely an observer.”  She pointed down the river.  “Who knows what he’ll grow to do in his future, but wouldn’t it be fascinating to see the hell he’ll raise no matter what?”

 

“...”

 

The woman nodded to silence.  “Well, all’s said and done, it’s your choice.”

 

Just like that, she disappeared, as if she never existed at all.  The baby, on the other hand, still cried, insisting his existence, thrashing his little body around on the blood-stained rag.

  
Crawling closer to him, Kouran put the last of her energy into wrapping him in the cloth, and looked down the river.


End file.
